Westwood United Methodist Church | WE ARE Meant to Change
Westwood United Methodist Church | WE ARE Meant to Change

Westwood United Methodist Church | WE ARE Meant to Change

Westwood Church

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Los Angeles, California

Recent Episodes

Love and Recovery Work
FEB 12, 2025
Love and Recovery Work

Dear Westwood Community,

It’s been just over a month since devastating wildfires ignited here in LA County. So much has changed in that time. My prayers continue to be with those whose lives and families are forever reshaped by this disaster–especially those who have lost homes, workplaces, churches, and especially their loved ones. I pray for continued comfort for this grief, and courage for what is ahead.

Recovery work is a long journey, and it will take a lot of heart.

I wanted to share my gratitude with you all for the ways that folks have been stepping in to try to offer meaningful assistance. Our Trustees have been working hard toward arranging for our children’s Sunday School rooms to be a temporary space for a preschool that was displaced from the Palisades when the fire destroyed their facility. They have been moving through all the appropriate licensing and safety requirements, and we have been working to prepare a lease for the Palisades Montessori Center. Our plan, which is close to becoming finalized, would be to have them share use of our classrooms for the remainder of this school year (through mid-June). We will still use the rooms on Sundays, and they will use them during the week. Our hope is that this arrangement can start as soon as Tuesday, February 18.

If you see preschool kids and teachers on our campus soon, I hope you will help welcome them!

In one of the many conversations where we were trying to work out details for this, one of our thoughtful Lay Leaders asked about what the impact of sharing our space with a preschool would be on our church staff–especially the folks who are here during the week, and who use those rooms at other times. I thought through some of the ways I imagine it will change and inconvenience various staff members. Then, I thought about our staff leaders–about each of their deep love of being a part of a church that is making a difference for others. I stand by what I said then: I think it would be harder on our staff to NOT try to make this work.

We are a congregation that wants to be of service. We are leaders who want to do our part for others. We are church folks who choose the inconvenient work of building community, again and again.

I am so grateful to our church leaders who are organizing other meaningful ways to serve the community in the aftermath of January’s wildfires. I look forward to the UMCOR Fire Relief Bucket Build project — which is both a community workday opportunity on March 9 when we assemble them after worship, and a giving opportunity to which folks can donate money or purchase specific items between now and March 9. Few things are as fun as spending some time working together for a project you believe in, and I hope you will join us for that.

Plus, this Sunday evening at 7:30pm in our Sanctuary, we are pleased to be able to host a Fire Recovery Benefit Concert of the Palisades Symphony. They were displaced from their usual home, which is currently serving as a fire recovery center, and we are very glad to be able to share our beautiful sanctuary as a venue. (The concert is free, though they are collecting free will donations for fire recovery!)

I know that there have been and will be a multitude of other ways our congregation serves the community in fire recovery work. Please know that your acts of compassion are meaningful expressions of your faith, and a beautiful part of our shared work as a congregation. May we continue to make space for others, to give assistance whenever we are able, and to build a community that reflects God’s values of love without limits.

grace and peace,
Pastor Molly

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-1 MIN
A Living Sanctuary for You
FEB 5, 2025
A Living Sanctuary for You

Dear Westwood Community,

Last week, I had the privilege of participating in a meeting of leaders in the Western Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church in the US. At one point in the long meeting, when everyone’s energy was waning, we decided to sing. Someone on the other side of the room started a song I’d learned at church camp back in high school: “Sanctuary.” We liked to sing it a LOT when I was a teenager, with earnest devotion and deep emotion. My first instinct, in all honesty, was to cringe: it was a visceral, subconscious callback to my sentimental Church Camp Era.

“Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary,” we sang. I remembered how I understood those words when I was fourteen, taking seriously my capacity to be a good Christian as I sang a prayer directly to God. “Pure and holy, tried and true,” the song continues, as I imagined the importance of my individual behavior as an expression of faith. (All the dangerous ways church folks talk about “purity” with teenagers deserves its own whole discussion, another day.) “With thanksgiving I’ll be a living sanctuary for you,” the verse concludes. I sang the alto harmony, which is embedded somewhere deep in my memory.

Last week when we sang this song, we were meeting in Portland at Great Spirit, a congregation of Native Americans that serves as a community space, too. Context matters, and it was powerful to be gathered in that particular church building. Our worship time began with the smell of sage and the resonant sounds of a drum circle; we spent time listening to Native American colleagues, contemplating how to help dismantle the oppressive ideas and systems that have been a persistent, harmful legacy of our US American story, through death-dealing actions and policies that have dehumanized our Native American siblings, robbing them of land and culture and life.

Then, we heard from some of our immigrant neighbors, including powerful voices from 580 Cafe here at UCLA. We learned and talked about what it can look like to provide sanctuary for immigrants these days, looking at ways that congregations and communities can stand up alongside undocumented neighbors in the face of an administration bent on dividing families and communities, and deporting them. Suddenly, I heard the words of that song differently: “Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary” isn’t just a call to individual piety. It is also a prayer for the church, asking for the help of the Holy Spirit in shaping us into living communities of protection and care for neighbors at risk. It’s an invitation to be sanctuary, together.

I was overcome with a sudden awareness that our communities of faith have been preparing us for this moment all along. The character of our faith, including qualities like holiness and empathy, humility and courage, compassion and love, have been shaping us as a community that practices a liberating, subversive kind of holiness. We know how to do this! This is the kind of life we’ve been singing about all along. In the same way that so many in our congregation opened up their homes to friends displaced by evacuations during wildfires, in the same way we are quick to make donations in response to disasters wherever they happen, in the same way we offer food to hungry neighbors, we are called to be living sanctuaries wherever we are.

For the sake of everyone who is feeling vulnerable today, let us remember that we have the capacity to speak up and stand alongside others as a kind of a living sanctuary: our transgender siblings, undocumented neighbors, generous humanitarian aid workers, lifetime civil servants, DEI advocates, anti-racist laborers, and all those working to dismantle oppressive systems.

Grace and peace,
Pastor Molly

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-1 MIN